News Chapter Four - Exploration Reveal

[Mengy]

Since we're on the topic of improving the exploration experience, I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to add more information on the DSS interface.



Leaving aside the surface material info on this gas giant (?), it looks like there's a slider below the INFO bar, which would -I hope- let us display astronomical information without having to open the sysmap like we have to do currently. There is also plenty of room to display more stuff. Cause, erm, if we have to honk, then fiddle with sensors and the DSS interface, and then open the sysmap to find the info we want, that'll just be too many layers for me. Deeper, yes; more screens and layers, no thanks.

Qohen, who made the mock up of that cockpit UI with all of the nice extra exploration info? I love it, that would be fantastic to have in game!

I've often wished Elite had a customizable UI much like World of Warcraft has, where we can move UI windows around and even make visual mods for it. That would add so much uniqueness and usefulness to the game.

 

[Qohen Leth]

Qohen, who made the mock up of that cockpit UI with all of the nice extra exploration info? I love it, that would be fantastic to have in game!

I've often wished Elite had a customizable UI much like World of Warcraft has, where we can move UI windows around and even make visual mods for it. That would add so much uniqueness and usefulness to the game.

I did, a while back The original thread is linked on the picture; I think you had commented on that thread back then, actually.

 

[Angus]

I think the real fear here is that we all heard the Devs say that they're adding stuff for explorers to find, but that it will turn out to be one tiny new puzzle located about 1000LY away... and that's it.

Absolutely right. The recent Guardian Beacons search being a case in point. 3 areas named, THOUSANDS of systems to search, and unclear as to how close you need to get to detect them, making any system a painstaking affair. I felt I'd been urinated on. Its like they thought, somebody will find them - and the rest can read about it in the forums, or see it on Youtube. I'd like to be warned if its that sort of an objective, so I can stay the hell away, and not waste my time. Fair enough if that's your bag, but count me out.


P.S.
GRRRR!

 

[Angus]

Despite their claims to the contrary, I think most of the insta-honk crowd want what this idiot is demonstarting.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUn1Htn-gsE


;-)

 

[Tippis]

Despite their claims to the contrary, I think most of the insta-honk crowd want what this idiot is demonstarting.

What makes him an idiot?
What is he demonstrating?
What is wrong with wanting that?

 

[Faded Glory]

What makes him an idiot?
What is he demonstrating?
What is wrong with wanting that?

Well, I could be wrong, but the poster might be being sarcastic, as the Youtube poster is called Angus...

In any case, they are demonstrating fast fuel scooping. And they are rather nicely demonstrating that without that visual overview of the system, under the new system as currently described, a player would have had to actively scan every body in the system (albeit without actually flying anywhere) in order to discover that there was really nothing of any interest there in the first place.

If they are being serious (which I hope they aren't), then the first line in their post is a sad display of forum bias, assuming to know what other players want out of the game when this thread demonstrably makes the point that there are definitely reasons beyond 'I win' buttons and credit farming.

 

[drkaii]

What makes him an idiot?
What is he demonstrating?
What is wrong with wanting that?

Don't worry, my moderator hairs started to bristle at this, until I clicked the link and saw that he is talking about himself and his own video. How idiotic of me.

 

[Tippis]

The point is he's actually 'racing' and honestly, what is he getting from this very brief snap of the local map? I'm not sure if this sort of superficiality really justifies to compromise an interesting new game mechanic where part of the appeal, the mystery, is immediately destroyed in a blink.

He's getting the information needed to decide whether it's a sufficiently interesting system to cancel the frameshift and have a closer look.

What appeal and mystery is being destroyed by the ability to make decisions? What new game mechanic is being compromised (and how)?

 

[Tippis]

Please read my post again. The whole post this time.

I did. Can you please answer the questions?

Nothing, provided it's limited to exactly what we see in this video as in no further local map informations.

Why and how would that limitation make any difference whatsoever?

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

The point is he's actually 'racing' and honestly, what is he getting from this very brief snap of the local map? I'm not sure if this sort of superficiality really justifies to compromise an interesting new game mechanic where part of the appeal, the mystery, is immediately destroyed in a blink. Would he really lose that much with the new concept? I'd say he's losing way less than those who want to dig these informations would lose.

Vehemently disagree.

Here's what you get (as if it hasn't been explained lots of times already in this thread and others *sigh*)

You get to have a snap decision on whether or not to cancel that Hyperjump countdown and go visit a potentially interesting place - this could either be a moon of a gas giant or whatever else one might be looking for at the time - depends on the type of explorer, and whether this is your play style or not - because we're all different and get our enjoyment from doing things differently.

For example - if I'd been speed jumping a few thousand LY, I would always be on the lookout for some interesting looking system along the way to stop and have a breather. Also on the lookout for something like an ELW moon orbiting a gas giant. Or an ELW or Water World in that system, because why not.

If I see a system with an ELW, that hyperjump gets cancelled quickstyle, and I'll check very quickly to see if it has been tagged or not. If it's not tagged, I'll then proceed to scan every body in that star system, including the ELW - because I have a personal rule that a system with an ELW should be completely scanned. (I have broken this rule once or twice in the past, but it's rare).

This is the main difference here - you and others like you want to have an 'air of mystery' - and I quickly want to know if a system is worth actually exploring or not. You seem to think that 'air of mystery' is part of exploring a system, including being initially blindfolded. I think that an 'air of mystery' is better served and more rewarding when there are things to find and do in the star system with the bodies which are present - that is, if FDEV add actual content within each star system, something that we currently have very little of. Whilst at the same time being able to quickly assess if a given star system is worth stopping and exploring further, in terms of stopping to survey the system further, just in general.

If 'air of mystery' == 'being blindfolded at jump-in until you spend time scanning possibly a hundred bodies in some systems", or "being blindfolded only to find out that the system is a brown dwarf with 8 non landable snowballs", then this sounds like a very dreary game indeed.

 

[Tippis]

Because it would

a) only provide the pure schematic view without any distances or other details that the local map still shows right now. It even would made him slightly faster as it would eliminate the need to enter the local map, which would be still blank for him in this state

b) would be perfectly sufficient when it comes to not compromising the new system

…and how would that make any difference? We're just circling back to the original question: what appeal and mystery is being destroyed by the ability to make decisions? What new game mechanic is being compromised (and how) by having those details? You keep saying that having this information will compromise something. You're still not explaining why that is.

What would the pilot in this video lose?

Agency. Information on which to base that stay-leave decision.

 

[WR3ND]

...

Maybe the game would be better served with mystery instead of an air of it, atmospheric worlds not withstanding?

 

[Netah]

Since we're on the topic of improving the exploration experience, I'm wondering if it would be possible to add more information on the DSS interface.



Leaving aside the surface material info on this gas giant (?), it looks like there's a slider below the INFO bar, which would -I hope- let us display astronomical information without having to open the sysmap like we have to do currently. There is also plenty of room to display more stuff. Cause, erm, if we have to honk, then fiddle with sensors and the DSS interface, and then open the sysmap to find the info we want, that'll just be too many layers for me. Deeper, yes; more screens and layers, no thanks.

... The original thread is linked on the picture;

(my emphasis in above quote)

Your mock up ship's UI is amazing, and I would actually welcome this type of scan vs the one they are currently proposing. Your vision doesn't force me into another "blind" screen.

It would be cool if they (FD) went back to that link and found some better ideas for the new ADS, if they are absolutely set on it happening.

 

[Faded Glory]

The point is he's actually 'racing' and honestly, what is he getting from this very brief snap of the local map? I'm not sure if this sort of superficiality really justifies to compromise an interesting new game mechanic where part of the appeal, the mystery, is immediately destroyed in a blink. Would he really lose that much with the new concept? I'd say he's losing way less than those who want to dig these informations would lose.

edit: assuming current local map functionality is still intact, which as I mentioned below don't *has* to be the case!

But wait, while I'm typing this I suddenly got an idea that actually could work! What if this local map snap would be briefly (for say 2 or 3 seconds) blended into the hud, without any other informations that we currently get in the local map (as in basically no text infos, no distances, planet descriptions and so forth). Could work for me, might need some mulling over but one thing is for sure: This pilot would lose literally nothing in this case!

Yes, he's racing and demonstrating fast fuel scooping. That's unimportant, and what I got from the brief view of the system map is that this is an unremarkable system with a couple of land-able planets, and more importantly, one which i don't wish to spend any further time exploring or examining. Of course, once FD put stuff out there in the form of POI's, I fully accept that I might miss out on discovering something remarkable or otherwise by not scanning each body, but that is at least my choice and I'm given the information to make that choice.

As far as mystery being immediately destroyed, I sort of accept that, but I truly believe that being forced to actively scan every body only to discover that there is no mystery will likely kill exploration stone dead after you've done it a few times, (and a huge percentage of systems aren't going to have anything mysterious or notable about them. At all.) As I've said and asked before (still waiting for someone to tell me I've either got the process wrong or am wrong in my conclusion), how can it possibly make sense to only be able to decide if something is worth scanning by having to scan it?

The new mechanic needs (IMO obviously) to have a flow to it.

1. See system and determine that there's something to make you want to explore in further detail.
2. Scan bodies to discover what they actually are and contain. (This should be but isn't based on information available from step 1)
3. Map planets to find POI's or materials. (This should be, and is, based on information available from step 2)

Each of the steps here should follow on from information gleaned in the previous step, and currently only step 3 follows naturally from step 2. Step 2 cannot follow from step 1 unless you have a low level overview of the system without needing to scan each body in detail which the new system currently doesn't have.

Regarding your suggestion, the only thing really that a low level overview needs to not have is distances as the new system allows the player to selectively scan by filtering the range of the scan. I don't see the added game-play in having the map only be available for a few seconds, not really sure it adds anything, it's not really a challenge just an artificial obstacle, and currently, other than distance the only text available in the system map is the word unexplored or alternatively the first discovered tag, and that tag could be important for a player in determining whether they want to explore further.

Which is the whole point of having an initial low level overview, to give the player enough information to decide if they want to spend any time in a given system rather than obliging them to spend time scanning only to discover that there's nothing there of interest to them. (And to be absolutely, 100% clear, I'm not talking about credits.)

 

[Tippis]

I think you guys still don't understand. He would get exactly this "snap decision" after which he still can decide if to stop and using the new scanner suite.

…except that he wouldn't be able to make that decision without the information provided. Again, you're not explaining why the honk is supposed to be such a problem and why this compromise is so completely out of the question. If you think that people don't understand, maybe you should actually start explaining, hmm?

But if you just want nothing more than keeping the current system without looking for a compromise, then I'm afraid discussion is over and you'l lose everything in the end.

Good thing that no-one is actually asking for that then. Now, the opposite, on the other hand, seems like a much more precarious position based on the answers so far…

 

[Genar-Hofoen]

I think you guys still don't understand. He would get exactly this "snap decision" after which he still can decide if to stop and using the new scanner suite. But if you just want nothing more than keeping the current system without looking for a compromise, then I'm afraid discussion is over and you'l lose everything in the end. Your choice.

Saying that we do not understand, is insulting at best. That was a poor post.

 

[Ziljan]

…and how would that make any difference? We're just circling back to the original question: what appeal and mystery is being destroyed by the ability to make decisions? What new game mechanic is being compromised (and how) by having those details? You keep saying that having this information will compromise something. You're still not explaining why that is.


Agency. Information on which to base that stay-leave decision.

The mechanic shown by the devs is based on filtering distance and filtering the energy distribution.

If you know any details of the System Map, then you already know exactly where to set your two filters, so the scanning process is decided for you automatically from the System Map. All the inputs from the player are just copy-paste from the system map. You are not only killing the sense of mystery and guesswork, you'd also be killing the entire active filtering mechanic.

This is why there is NO compromise system possible. The only viable compromise is one where you have both sets of scanners in the game and can only load one set.

If all you're looking for is whether or not you should stay to scan the system, then the energy distribution will tell you that as easily as the current system map tell you, but without destroying the sense of mystery. We currently don't know for sure, but I would assume that the game's energy signal also tells you whether a body has an atmosphere, and hence whether it is landable.

 

[Tippis]

The mechanic shown by the devs is based on filtering distance and filtering the energy distribution.

If you know any details of the System Map, then you already know exactly where to set your two filters, so the scanning process is decided for you automatically from the System Map.

The system map would at most only give distance (and only for some bodies, and even then, the distances would not actually be accurate to where the body is in relation to the player), and this would just give you more agency in what you choose to look for. All of the filtering would still be there; there is already no guesswork based on what has been said so far (this is a good thing by the way — guesswork is what you have resort to when no actual skill or actionable knowledge can be put to use); and there is no mystery to begin with since nothing mysterious can be found with the honk. The active filtering UI would still be just as required for the part where it matters: the surface scanning.

If all you're looking for is whether or not you should stay to scan the system, then the energy distribution will tell you that as easily as the current system map tell you, but without destroying the sense of mystery.

If that's true, then there is no reason not to retain the current information and the player agency based on that information.

Oh, and once more: what mystery is being destroyed by the ability to make decisions? It keeps being brought up but never actually explained or defined.

 

[Cobra1984]

There is absolutely no sense of mystery possible once the results have been seen or encountered before - you're just generating them from a static table using modifiers.

The only gameplay value you can derive from a mechanic like the one proposed (or the existing honk) is the credit value or the 'gameplay token' value.

We're just rolling tables regardless of what we do to roll them.

There isn't enough substance underneath this scanning mechanic to justify it and that's why it's meeting resistance.

There isn't enough substance to support space legs either for example.

The scanning mechanic is only half of what this update needed to be and that's why it's a hard sell for Frontier - I'd be extremely surprised (and disappointed) if they don't understand this.

 

[Ziljan]

The system map would at most only give distance...

You must have missed how the filters work:

You are able to tune the focus of your sensors to a particular point on the scale, making emissions from objects at this range much clearer, at the cost of filtering out signals returned from bodies not emitting at this range.

This means that if you KNOW THE DISTANCE, then the only signal that will show up is the one at that exact distance. It's like a magician saying "pick a card any card" while they are only holding ONE CARD in their hand. Nevermind mystery, now you are just copying and pasting distance, and getting a literal cheat sheet for the energy signal. Where is the "player agency" in being a human copy-paste macro?

If all you're looking for is whether or not you should stay to scan the system, then the energy distribution will tell you that as easily as the current system map tell you, but without destroying the sense of mystery.

If that's true, then there is no reason not to retain the current information and the player agency based on that information.

Oh, and once more: what mystery is being destroyed by the ability to make decisions? It keeps being brought up but never actually explained or defined.

The energy distribution is the cover of a mystery book with a blurb, title and author's name.

By keeping the ADS honk, you want to put the last page of the book in the prologue and say: "Look! The mystery is still intact! Now I know exactly what pages of the mystery I want to read! What is the problem here?? I now have AGENCY, because I know which pages to skip!"